Vote Progressive Dane, get screwed
It was what we thought it was. Madison is 10 to 1 opposed to the city’s $40 wheel tax, judging from the 2,000 pages [CORRECTED] of e-mails that flooded city hall from 250 individuals. Kudos to Chris Rickert of the WI State Journal for filing the open records request to get that info. Many of the supporting messages came from insiders like the public employees union.
Didn’t stop the council from approving Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway’s* tax 11 to 8 a month ago. (* Progressive Dane)
Voting YES: Bidar, Furman*, Lemmer, Rummel*, Martin, Evers*, Moreland, Foster*, Verveer*, Heck*, Kemble* — 11
Voting NO: Abbas, Albouras, Baldeh, Carter, Harrington-McKinney, Henak, Skidmore, Tierney — 8
Notice anything strange about the tax? It was sold as the only way possible to balance the city budget. There Was No Choice! Scott Walker made us do it! No choice — if you wanted to embark on a multi-million dollar rapid bus transit system, that is. But alders never really debated bus rapid transit. A major policy initiative snuck in through the back door. We have to fund it before we will know it works.
Rickert’s news story concludes with this gem: Ald. Grant Foster* responds to a constituent opposed to the wheel tax this way:
“Can you imagine a future where you might need to own fewer or zero cars? What would it take to make that a reasonable option for you or your household?”
Foster’s arrogance just shouts off the page.
Q. What would it take to get you off automobiles?
A. How about creating new taxes like the wheel tax and raising existing taxes on property? That might free up space in the garage.
Foster, we are told, owns no cars. Sing along with the white lab-coated nebbishes at the Werkes:
Can you imagine a world where there are no cars?
It’s easy, if you try.
No Hell below us. Above us only sky.
Imagine all the people, waiting for the bus!
Traitorous American Communists
More evidence that the Communist party of the U.S. was a traitorous fifth column, a safe house for spies, comes from researchers Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes, as reported in the New York Times.
In 20212, Mr. Klehr obtained newly declassified FBI files on informants who had successfully penetrated the Community Party of the United States. Suddenly, … major parts of the atomic puzzle [Russia’s acquisition of the atomic bomb a mere 49 months after the first test at Los Alamos] fell into place.
Atonement from the newspaper that employed Stalin apologist Walter Duranty and demonized those who ferreted out Russian subversives.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: Speaking of The Capital Times*, wouldn’t you think they would editorialize Yay or Nay on so important a matter as the wheel tax, especially given that they are now advertising their local content? Not a peep.
Blaska Policy Werkes 
18 responses to “The people had spoken vs. Satya’s wheel tax but who listened?”
I think the people spoke at the ballot box.
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@Butch;
“I think the people spoke at the ballot box.”
Like they did on 11/08/2016, or was that different?
Doesn’t matter; you also think (a term I use advisedly) that the appropriately named Colin Kaepernick is, and I quote: “a great activist.”***
Anywho, any number of people that spoke at the ballot box favorably for SRC have subsequently indicated to The Gotch, in no uncertain terms, that they will not make the same mistake twice.
***Your great activist better have a Plan B; no (as in ZERO) NFL teams have contacted him after his joke-of-a-workout.
Slobberingracism is a FAR better approach to the pudding-pated than the fact that he’s nothing special, was a one dimensional player to begin with, and can’t play worth a $#!T anymore, am I right?
The Gotch
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People spoke then too who received the most actual votes on 11/8/2016?
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@geo_;
”People spoke then too who received the most actual votes on 11/8/2016?”
SERIOUSLY?? Help me here; my best sense, to which I cling, tells me you’re smarter than that.
The Madison Mayoral election is a winner-take-all; everyone knew that going in.
I haven’t noticed anyone challenging/trying to litigate the results of that election; you?
Righties (The Gotch included) look forward to doing better next time through, oddly enough with what appears to be a growing Unholy Alliance of pissed off Lefties.
Per the Constitution of the United States of America, the Presidential election is not winner-take-all. Anyone with even THE most rudimentary understanding of basic civics knows this; only clueless imbeciles would believe, claim, or insinuate, otherwise.
Yet Lefty, triggered by the results of an iron-clad, constitutionally sound, and democratically determined Presidential Election WINNER, has spent every last second of every last hour during EACH of the last 1113 (and counting) days trying, in a monumentally embarrassing fashion, to overturn it.
Speaking of 11/08-11/09; ‘member the hilarious cascading fail sob fest that ensued?
The Gotch sure does! That was mental illness on a massive scale, it continues to plague Lefty unmercifully to this day, am I right?
It progresses apace, and it’s the driving reason why the democrat Party hopeful hopelessness is fielding a bunch of more More MORE high quality/quantity free #@!T promising idiots.
The Gotch
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Opposition? Votes? Popular rejection? OMG, “What’s democracy got to do wid it.?”
All that matters to the ruling clique — Leninist control — the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
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Re: Wheel Tax: Elections have consequences, and my fellow citizens knew quite well what they were buying when they voted for Prog Dane candidates. Likewise the PD for endorsing Prog Dane candidates. Likewise teachers because their union endorses Prog Dane candidates. In the next election cycle, if like minded candidates collectively market themselves as: Prog Dane= Poison and remind the electorate of the havoc on the civic body these folks wreak, perhaps their hegemony can be broken.
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Gordon, keep in mind the police UNION endorsed her, the rank-and-file DID NOT. That tells us more about unions. I was at a meet the mayor event and EVERYBODY there was on her about the tax. She kept saying she had to do it, because the city isn’t getting more state money. The alder present blamed republicans, but yet the city is run by all liberals! They did happen to keep 200Large for a cop babysitter.
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Wheel tax supports buses…. Next new tax will be when spit shields are needed upon entry….
https://www.nbc15.com/content/news/Man-arrested-after-spitting-on-Madison-Metro-driver-and-breaking-bus-windows-565430112.html
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I do believe most of the people spoke out against Walker and the republican morons socialism for a foreign corporation, yet it happened. Now even a Koch funded think tank is poo-pooing the Walker brand of socialism that will cost taxpayers dearly for nothing, at least a wheel tax will produce something.
OH, TC lied about the amount of dilbit that leaked from their pipeline. The length of conservative incompetence as illustrated by the above and the extortion of the Ukrainian government and you pick up on a wheel tax while “Rome” is burning.
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Not 2000 emails, rather 2000 pages from 250 people, according to the Chris Rickert report today.
“Almost 2,000 pages of emails from some 250 people covering the period of Oct. 2 through Oct. 30 — and released under a public records request from the Wisconsin State Journal — show opposition to the highest-in-the-state wheel tax was running about 10-to-1. Typical was an Oct. 23 email to the City Council from North Sider Terry DeLong.”
https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/emails-to-madison-leaders-reveal-strong-opposition-to-wheel-tax/article_0b41579a-e83b-5a02-b4b7-7533bb5a14bb.html
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Holy shit, you are correct. Inexcusable mistake.
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Was your reading of the article wiped clean, like with a cloth…?
The Gotch
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Nah; you are excused, forgiven, absolved, etc. because it is your good fortune to reside in merciful Madison where some unnecessary over paid bureaucrat is already busy designing a complex 25page restorative justice program to rehabilitate your proofing skills. You will be allowed nearly countless mistakes and attempts at resolution without consequence, so do not stress.
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The city still hasn’t collected all the leaves in my neighborhood. Auto thefts aren’t being prosecuted. Did the $156,000 annual salary bus driver get a raise yet? The city needs a new pansexual outreach coordinator. The position pays $45,000 a year, plus pension.
Bus rapid transit = a sticker on the side of existing buses that says: “innovation, inclusion, bus rapid transit in Madison!”
The bureaucrats’ pensions is where the money really goes.
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@White Hills;
“The city still hasn’t collected all the leaves in my neighborhood.”
Perhaps you mean the latest batch?
Same here in Midvale Heights; they’re piled high along terraces and will soon be drenched (quadrupling their weight) and then dumped on with winter snow.
Many of the trees (certain oaks [whose leaves kill grass], our Korean Viburnum & Beech) haven’t even completely shed, yet.
Glass half full?
The BIKIE paths has additional funds earmarked to continue to coddle what is already THE most coddled demographic in our Fair City; law-scoffing, non-registering BIKIES.
MAKE THOSE THAT RIDE, ABIDE!
The Gotch
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My sister lives on N. Sherman Avenue, the boundary line between Maple Bluff and Madison (she lives on the MB side). The people on the Madison side of the street have huge piles of uncollected leaves on their terraces; the people on the MB side have their leaves collected as often as necessary until there are no more leaves left on the terraces. And for this, they pay half the taxes the people on the Madison side pay. Progressivism in (in)action.
If I were the constituent on the receiving end of Ald. Grant Foster’s haughty riposte, I would bitch-slap him like there was no tomorrow. How else is one to penetrate the invisible shield of self-righteousness that surrounds Madison liberals?
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“If I were the constituent on the receiving end of Ald. Grant Foster’s haughty riposte, I would bitch-slap him like there was no tomorrow.”
Intellectually humiliating Foster in front of people is a more effective course of action GLK and even more gratifying than physical violence.
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How can you tell a policy is progressive? Does it take money out of your pocket to; create more patronage and graft? redistribute the product of your labor to the stupid, lazy or violent? benefit public employee unions? undermine American culture and values? If so, then it’s progressive.
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